DESERT SUNSETS

Desert Wildflowers

8 Deserts That Aren’t Really Deserts

Deserts take up nearly one-third of the Earth's land surface, yet only 41 countries in the world (one-fifth) are hosts to all the deserts on this planet. That leaves out quite a significant number of countries without one. I don’t know how it feels to live in a country without a desert, but it must certainly feel bad and inadequate because there are a large number of regions that don’t actually have these hot and arid geographic anomaly but are still quick to label any sandy or arid place a ‘desert’, and turn it into a tourist attraction. 

Here are some of most notable pseudo-deserts around the world.

Desert of Maine

Richat Structure: Eye Of The Sahara

The Richat Structure, also known as the Eye of the Sahara, is a prominent circular feature in the Sahara desert of west–central Mauritania near Ouadane. Surrounded by thousands of square miles of nearly featureless desert, this 40-50 km in diameter series of concentric circles is readily visible from space. This prominent circular feature in the Sahara desert has attracted attention since the earliest space missions because it looks like a gigantic bull’s-eye.

Richat Structure is not the site of an ancient meteor crater, as many people originally postulated. These concentric circles are actually alternating layers of sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous rocks that were pushed upward in a symmetrical anticline, geologic dome, from below due to a small incursion of magma. The structure is a deeply eroded. The sedimentary rock exposed in this dome range in age from Late Proterozoic (2.5 billion years) within the center of the dome to Ordovician (480 million years) sandstone around its edges.

Initially interpreted as an asteroid impact structure because of its high degree of circularity, it is now argued to be a highly symmetrical and deeply eroded geologic dome. Despite extensive field and laboratory studies, geologists have found a lack of any credible evidence for shock metamorphism or any type of deformation indicative of an extraterrestrial impact.

Amazing Desert World

Manhattan of the Desert: Shibam, Yemen

The city of Shibam, located in the central-western area of Hadhramaut Governorate, in the Ramlat al-Sab`atayn desert, is best known for its towering mudbrick skyscrapers. This small town of 7000 is packed with around 500 mud houses standing between 5 and 11 stories tall and reaching 100 feet high, all constructed entirely of mud bricks. The bizarre skyline that the high rise buildings bestow upon the city has earned Shibam the moniker "Manhattan of the Desert."

Shibam is often called "the oldest skyscraper city in the world" and is one of the oldest and best examples of urban planning based on the principle of vertical construction. Its plan is trapezoidal, almost rectangular; and it is enclosed by earthen walls within which a block of dwellings, also built from earth, have been laid out on an orthogonal grid. Shibam was founded in the 3rd century AD, but most of the houses you see here dates only to the 16th century, following a devastating flood of which Shibam was the victim in 1532-33. However, some older houses and large buildings still remain from the first centuries of Islam, such as the Friday Mosque, built in 904, and the castle, built in 1220.

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Manhattan of the Desert: Shibam

The city of Shibam, located in the central-western area of Hadhramaut Governorate, in the Ramlat al-Sab`atayn desert, is best known for its towering mudbrick skyscrapers. This small town of 7000 is packed with around 500 mud houses standing between 5 and 11 stories tall and reaching 100 feet high, all constructed entirely of mud bricks. The bizarre skyline that the high rise buildings bestow upon the city has earned Shibam the moniker "Manhattan of the Desert." Shibam is often called "the oldest skyscraper city in the world" and is one of the oldest and best examples of urban planning based on the principle of vertical construction. Its plan is trapezoidal, almost rectangular; and it is enclosed by earthen walls within which a block of dwellings, also built from earth, have been laid out on an orthogonal grid. Shibam was founded in the 3rd century AD, but most of the houses you see here dates only to the 16th century, following a devastating flood of which Shibam was the victim in 1532-33. However, some older houses and large buildings still remain from the first centuries of Islam, such as the Friday Mosque, built in 904, and the castle, built in 1220.